We went to a pub off Borough High Street, an ancient place with twinkling Christmas lights hanging from the timber beams and dozens of workers sinking one last pint before going home to the kids.

As we entered the pub, a middle-aged couple stood up to leave and Charlie grabbed their table, attracting evil stares from a man and woman who’d been waiting at the bar. She ignored them.

‘Red wine,’ she mouthed at me.

I could feel the couple whose table we’d ‘stolen’ glowering at me but I was in such a good mood their daggers bounced off me. There was a mirror behind the bar and I caught my reflection. My hair, dark brown, stuck up at the back no matter how often I tried to flatten it down. I was still slim, despite my sedentary lifestyle, and I’d been told I had good cheekbones. I looked scruffy, though, and had bags under my eyes, though these were mostly obscured by my glasses. Spending so much time on my own, I didn’t worry too much about my appearance, but what would Charlie think? I assumed, from the way she’d asked me here for a drink, that she wasn’t horrified by what she saw.

I bought Charlie’s wine and a pint for myself, then sat down opposite her.

‘So, what happened to you?’ she asked. ‘Why were you at the hospital?’

I took a long sip of lager. ‘I had a detached retina.’

‘Nasty.’

‘I know. But it’s all better now.’

She downed half her wine in two gulps. ‘I feel all better now too.’ She put on a funny Eliza Doolittle voice, a mangled blend of Cockney and Yorkshire. ‘I’m only an ’umble project manager, so I don’t know much about eyes. What caused it?’

‘They don’t really know. Apparently, it’s something that can happen to people who are badly short-sighted.’

‘Really? Let’s see how short-sighted you are.’ She took my glasses from me and tried them on, instantly adopting the sexy geek look. ‘Whew! You really are blind.’

She handed my glasses back and asked me to tell her more about what had happened.

‘It was weird. First thing, I noticed a couple of floaters – you know, those little dots that sometimes appear in your vision and, er, float around. Then I saw this shadow that started here—’ I pointed to the corner of my left eye ‘—and slowly spread across my vision. I was trying to ignore it, thinking it was just something that would pass.’

‘Typical bloke.’

‘Yeah. I would rather die a slow, painful death than go to see a doctor. Eventually, I Googled it, learned about detached retinas, about how the retina peels away from where it should be, and how I could go blind if I didn’t get to the hospital straight away. That was when I called a taxi.’